Unions canvassed Rudd return

Australian Council of Trade Unions president
Ged Kearney
confirmed a meeting last week discussed the possibility of
Kevin Rudd
returning to the federal Labor leadership, but insists the movement is firmly behind Prime Minister
Julia Gillard
.

The meeting, reported exclusively in TheAustralian Financial Review, helped spark a week of unrest in which Ms Gillard was given an ultimatum to boost federal Labor’s primary vote to 38 per cent to keep her position and cross-benchers threatened there could be an early election.

“People would think we were naive and silly, as an organisation as large as we are with 2 million members, not to discuss the political situation of the day," Ms Kearney told the ABC on Sunday. “Clearly what came out of that meeting was that there is very firm support for Julia Gillard as prime minister and the policies she has delivered."

Ms Gillard stared down her detractors at the weekend, saying she had no intention of quitting, as Communications Minister
Stephen Conroy
swore he would go to the back bench if there was a change in leadership.

AFR
AFR

Government whip
Joel Fitzgibbon
sparked the week of unrest when he said unpopular leaders didn’t survive on either side of politics. That came ahead of a meeting of unions which discussed Ms Gillard’s position and the possibility of a change.

“You’ll see me as Prime Minister for another Google hangout in 2013," Ms Gillard told an online chat on the weekend.

Senator Conroy said: “What’s relevant is that Kevin Rudd’s not going to be prime minister ... Julia Gillard will lead us to the next election."

Australian Workers Union head
Paul Howes
downplayed a Rudd challenge. “I don’t think there is a challenge on, I don’t believe Kevin is running, I believe him when he has said on numerous times that he won’t challenge the prime minister," he said.

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While there was disagreement over the content of the meeting, Labor MPs said it was now clear the union movement was losing its hold over MPs who would put self-interest first as they tried to keep their seats.

They said Ms Gillard had been put on notice again and that cracks were appearing in the government’s relations not only with the Greens but with the cross-benchers with whom it has a power-sharing agreement.

The prospect of a leadership changes is weighing on the minds of some MPs, who consider it as a risk to the sustainability of the Parliament and a move that has no guarantee of improving Labor’s polling position, following venomous surrounding the last ballot in February. At that time, Treasurer Wayne Swan, in an unprecedented statement, described Mr Rudd as “disloyal", which sparked an angry response from resources minister Martin Ferguson.

Mr Ferguson said Mr Swan’s scorching attack on the former prime minister was a “character assassination" and that he “should take a good, hard look at himself."

On the cusp of another opinion survey this week, some members of the caucus have said Ms Gillard must lift the party’s primary vote to 38 per cent from is current 30 per cent to avoid a fresh push for change. That would return Labor to a position similar to the one it took into the last election.

Labor must re-engage with those voters who have drifted into the “others" category in opinion polls. The ration of voters who want “others" or are uncommitted or refuse to state a preference has more than doubled to 20 per cent since the last election.

Former federal Labor leader
Mark Latham
, who backed Treasurer
Wayne Swan
for a leadership change and offered to work for him, said the 8.5 per cent informal vote in the weekend Melbourne by-election showed the voting public was sick of spin.

“You have almost 10 per cent of people saying they don’t want either and that is another sign of the disillusionment with politics," he said on Sunday.

In the 2010 state poll 36767 votes were cast and in this by-election, with only a handful of postal and provisional votes still to be included, only 27245 votes were cast.

Scrutineers reported that a number of the informal votes also had angry anti-Labor messages about issues such as asylum seekers written on them.